Paul Laxalt

Paul Laxalt (2 August 1922-6 August 2018) was Governor of Nevada (R) from 2 January 1967 to 4 January 1971 (succeeding Grant Sawyer and preceding Mike O'Callaghan) and a US Senator from Nevada from 18 December 1974 to 3 January 1987 (succeeding Alan Bible and preceding Harry Reid).

Biography
Paul Laxalt was born in Reno, Nevada on 2 August 1922, the son of Basque immigrant parants. He served as a US Army medic in the Philippines during World War II, and he worked as a lawyer after the war. He served as District Attorney of Ormsby County from 1950 to 1954, as Lieutenant Governor from 1 January 1963 to 2 January 1967 (succeeding Maude Frazier and preceding Edward Fike, and as Governor from 1967 to 1971. With financial support from Howard Hughes, Laxalt opened the state's first community colleges and its first medical school, and he supported prison reform, environmental conservation, and fiscal conservatism. He left his successor, Mike O'Callaghan, with a budget surplus, and Laxalt and his family opened a hotel/casino in Carson City. In 1974, however, he returned to the Senate when Governor O'Callaghan appointed him to succeed the retiring Alan Bible.

Laxalt befriended President Ronald Reagan and Senators Jesse Helms and Ted Kennedy, and he was nicknamed "the First Friend" for his closeness to Reagan. He opposed President Jimmy Carter's returning of the Panama Canal to Panamanian control, and he was later accused of allowing for the Mafia to "skim" at his casino; he later won a defamation lawsuit against the Sacramento Bee in relation to its accusations. Laxalt retired from the Senate in 1987 and was succeeded by Harry Reid of the Democratic Party, and he briefly ran for the presidency in 1988 before dropping out four months into his candidacy due to his failure to meet his fundraising goals. He worked as a lawyer and as a consultant after leaving politics, and he died in 2018.